Backup Files

[Derek Atkins]

"Dave Sergeant" <dave at davesergeant.com> writes:

> I posted about this last week. I have set the option to never save 
> logs. This has indeed stopped the generation of backup files. But logs 
> are still being generated in profusion so clearly they are NOT treated 
> the same.
>
> The way GC generates backup files embedded with the date is most 
> confusing. I would be happy for it to keep a single backup, of the 
> previous version, but not countless numbers of them. I am never ever 
> going to use them as in any case I do manual backups to external media 
> at regular intervals. The logfiles are redundant once I have closed the 
> application and no use whatsoever.

There is a real reason to keep multiple backups, and that is because if
you make a mistake you might not realize it for a while.  If it only
kept a single backup then you'd be out of luck if you didn't notice the
error the next time you saved!  Whereas with the current method you
could EASILY see when the error got introduced.

Similarly with log files, they can be used not only for auditing
purposes, but also to replay in the case that you need to go back in
time to fix an error.

I admit that generally these kinds of errors are more often data
corruption bugs in the code, so it more applies during development and
alpha testing releases than in stable releases, but the fact remains
that periodically we do find data corruption bugs where having real
backups are priceless.  Even if you have your own backup scheme, it
might not backup the data file as frequently as gnucash would.

But this is why you can turn it off if you so choose.

> Dave

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available